Dems Face Immigration Hurdle, Too

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has a long answer when it comes to immigration -- "We've gotta do five things simultaneously," she said in Burlington during a swing through Iowa last week. But for Iowa Democrats, there are two big applause lines.

In the down-and-out river town of Waterloo, the crowd cheered Clinton when she promised to crack down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants. But the loudest, quickest applause came for another line: "You're going to have to learn English."

Story Continued Below

Immigration isn't at the top of any Democratic presidential candidate's agenda, and conventional wisdom holds that navigating the issue is crucial only for Republicans in next January's caucuses.

But a closer look shows that concern about immigration seems to burn almost as brightly for liberal Iowa caucus-goers as it does for the Republicans and conservatives with whom it is traditionally identified. And Democrats are also being forced to address the emotional edge of an issue that has become part of the lives of voters in even the most homogenous parts of the country. Whether any Democrat will attempt to gain an advantage by tapping into these currents within the party, or whether they'll remain unified around proposals to offer illegal immigrants access to citizenship, remains an open question.

"Chicanos from Mexico are a presence in a lot of moderately sized and smaller towns in Iowa and other parts of the Midwest," said Steven Schier, a professor of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota. "That gives it (the immigration issue) an immediacy that it didn't have 10 or 20 years ago."

A University of Iowa poll of 1,290 registered Iowa voters, set to be released this week, found that about 40 percent of Democrats identified immigration as a "very important" issue, with nearly every voter surveyed saying it was either very or somewhat important. About 60 percent of Republicans called the issue "very important."

"It's a surprising number," pollster Dave Redlawsk said of the Democratic total. "The impression out there is that this is more of a Republican issue, and there isn't a Democrat who is running on a hard-core immigration position. But what the poll suggests is that there's broad interest in what's going on with undocumented immigrants."

The poll has another surprise, however. Redlawsk found that a majority of both Iowa's Democrats and Republicans -- given the explicit option in the poll -- would prefer to see what they called "undocumented" immigrants pay fines and learn English but stay in the country. Only about one in five Democrats, and a quarter of Republicans, favored mass deportation.

Iowa would seem an odd choice for a hotbed of immigration anxiety. The home of the crucial first caucus is 92 percent non-Hispanic white, and less than 4 percent Hispanic, according to 2005 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

But groups of undocumented, largely Mexican immigrants are settling around the meat-packing plants that employ them in western Iowa and elsewhere in the state. The issue has intermittently spilled over into the state's politics, as in 2002, when the then-Republican legislature passed, and Democratic governor Tom Vilsack signed, a law restricting the official use of languages other than English. The new governor, Democrat Chet Culver, campaigned on a promise to push for repeal of the English-only law.

The issue, though, remains high on the agenda for many of the Democratic activists who turn up at forums across Iowa to grill candidates for president. Clinton was asked about immigration in two of her three town-hall-style meetings last week. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) took a question on the subject Friday in Algona, according to an aide's transcript. And former North Carolina senator John Edwards was pressed on his views in a United Auto Workers event in Newton last month.

All three candidates -- like politicians of both parties who support the McCain-Kennedy immigration overhaul -- take a similar approach, stressing tough-sounding measures, such as increasing border security and cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants, to balance their support for ultimately giving most illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

President Bush, speaking Monday in Yuma, Ariz., struck a similar balance between enforcement and tolerance of existing immigrants.

But the political landscape in Iowa may prove particularly tricky for Democrats, given the emotionally charged nature of the debate about the question of language.

The promise by leading Democratic candidates to make English skills a requirement for immigrants to obtain legal status is uncontroversial as a policy, and language skills are already required for naturalization. But while calling for English-only policies may earn roaring applause, the drive in Iowa to make English the state's "official" language was a hard-fought issue, though it was opposed by many Democratic activists in the state, as well as Culver.

Edwards earned an emotional response on March 10 in Newton when, while listing his own criteria for "earning" legalization, he said: "Another one is a little more controversial, but I think they ought to learn to speak English."

Clinton's speech last weekend was also striking for its tough vocabulary, which cast a plan for naturalizing most illegal immigrants -- after they've paid fines -- in the language of national security.

"They're not going back unless they are rounded up and we find out who they are," she said in Burlington of illegal immigrants. "Having lived through 9/11, I want to know who they are. We need to register them, and if they are criminals, we need to deport them," she said, before going on to say "a lot of these people who have been here for years" should get "some kind of legal form."

But Democrats have to fear a push back. As the University of Iowa poll suggested, Iowans' focus on the immigration issue isn't matched by a clear fervor for the hardest line of mass deportation, a dynamic candidates must bear in mind.

Sandy Kemp, a retired gym teacher who questioned Clinton on the issue in Waterloo, said she was satisfied with the senator's answer.

Kemp said she and other Iowans are responding to Clinton's evocation of her own childhood in the '50s, an emotion Kemp described as, "Let's keep America the way it was -- including legal immigrants."

A retired auto worker, Dwight Green, who asked Clinton about immigration in Burlington, however, said he was dissatisfied with the candidate's answer.

"Our Medicare is out of money because of all of the illegals," he said.

He acknowledged, however, that there's virtually no choice for Democrats on the issue of immigration. Green said he won't support Clinton for another, related reason: her husband's North American Free Trade Agreement. He said he was leaning toward supporting Edwards.